Oh just wait till I post a trip report on this place. It´s been amazing! I highly recommend coming here - being a climber or not. Time to get back to playing!

fELIZ Navidad

Greetings from Siurana! We´re having fun!

Shoes, Cookies and Presents

My mom, sister Marcy, Ryan and I got together on Monday night for some sugar cookie making and decorating and to celebrate Christmas. My mom tends to excel at gift giving - she even had something for Makiah. She quickly snatched the treat out of my hand and hurried off to her dog bed to commence the chewathon.



We followed a serious butter fest sugar cookie from my new favorite cookbook and it took a while to figure out the consistency. But once it finally started to roll into a monster ball, I divided it into two discs and put it in the fridge to chill. And a new trick I learned- put parchment paper on both sides of your cookie dough to prevent the dough from sticking to your rolling pin. (Notice smiley Makiah in the background - she's such a people dog.)



Next came the baking, and then after they cooled completely, the decorating. Ryan's homemade icing was good - a little runny though and it made for a hard precise decorating medium.



Of course we couldn't just fill up on cookies - and my mom came prepared with a childhood favorite of Portuguese Bean Soup. Don't worry - if you didn't get enough fat intake from the cookie scraps, you will most certainly get there by downing some sausage soup! Nothing that tastes that good can be good for you!



After dinner we did our gift exchange and Ryan hit the nail on the head with the soap shoe dispenser. (Originally it was a re-gift from Carrie at the elephant exchange this past weekend. Ryan saw it, wrapped it and we had a good chuckle about it.) I swear he used a whole thing of tape to wrap it - but it was well worth it. My mom was squealing in delight, "where on Earth did you find such a perfect gift?"



We headed back to the kitchen to complete our cookies and Marcy and Ryan both kicked out the final touches on the heart stopping treats. They looked great!



And of course, Marcy's favorite creation - a sky diving santa wearing a G string. Nice work Marcy!

It's hard to follow up the CT...

Thank you all my faithful female readers who got a kick out of the last post. It makes me laugh thinking how hard it made all of you laugh when you read that well thought out and carefully crafted post. HA!

The Cougar

Today was very productive on the surf front - I just couldn't pass this one up.

Thanks Jesse -

This was created by our Spanish interpretor Jesse. Thanks for the laughs.

Ryan

Stiff Neck

Yet another bad ass weekend of fun fun fun!

Kicked off the long winter nights with a sushi party with chef Melanie directing all of us how to make sushi. Turns out we bought one too many spider crabs and eel and had a few pieces of sushi leftover. The good news - everyone walked away with stuffed bellies and happy faces.

We went to Uwagimaya on Thursday and picked up some necessary ingredients - can't forget the MSG! Luckily only the mayo and the eel had the sixth food group in it - speaking of which - eel is super fatty with 265 calories in one teaspoon! According to Ai, this fat is what makes the ladies more attractive and attaches to the hips. Bring on the Omega 3's and pack on the ba-donk-a-donk butt.



The ladies had the first attempt at the rolling and made cute petite little rolls. They were perfect bit size pieces. You could even talk while chewing them down.



Then the guys had gave it a go and made some macho man rolls. Check out Ryan's big rice sushi fix! He attempted to eat it in one bite too and was chewing for a while. And then he made some oyster sushi and spread on a shot-to-the-dome chuck of wasabi.






The next morning, Ryan got up at 5 and I slept in till 6 to meet up with Julie and head up to Steven's Pass for some inbound skiing. Ryan went with some fellas to Crystal area and did some back country skiing. Julie and I planned on meeting Karen at the clock at 9:30 and by 9:50 we were itching to go with no sign of her and headed up the mountain. It snowed all day - and the powder was great. They still need more snow - a couple of rocks were exposed and they have yet to open the back side of the mountain - but all in all it was a great day! We managed to ski up till 3:30 - a record for me, especially on tele skis. The slopes were crowded though - with way too many people on the mountain. We saw evidence of a collision under the Skyline chair - a good excuse to do more moguls and harder terrain.

My legs are starting to come around and they weren't nearly as sore and sluggish as last week. Afterward we headed to Leavenworth to Karen and Anne's bungalow nestled on the Wenatchee River off of Icicle Creek Road.. They fed us enchiladas and we had some laughs over dinner. We also had the annual Ti white elephant gift exchange - and I finally got rid of the infamous penis shorts! Carrie is now the proud owner of the statue David nude colored shorts, well until next year.

The next morning we woke up and headed out for a few hours of skate skiing. The snow was great and we built up a sweat on fun rolling terrain. At one point, we were cruising along and some guy was approaching us, I decided to go in hot into a down sloping corner, lost my balance and did a cartoon looking maneuver, yard sailing and taking out the cross country tracks. We all laughed pretty hard - although this morning I woke up with a crook in my neck. I sure wish someone could have caught that on camera - classic!

We worked up an appetite and headed to the Sleeping Lady lodge for some food and decided to try the golf course, across the street from Karen's place. It was much more challenging with tons of hills and descents - not to mention deer poop. My dumbass thought it would be fine to roll through it and it stopped me in my tracks and I went down hard. Good times, good times.



Thankfully I have a massage booked for today and I can get my neck worked on!

I've been struggling with getting on the bike lately - specifically the weekends. Will it really hurt if I take a mental break from riding long, wet and cold rides on the weekends and instead run my legs into the ground while descending mountains?

So this weekend I get to hang with some Avanti ladies and laugh our butts off on the slopes. Photos to follow....

GRD

We got home at 11:45 last night - waaaay too late for attempting to get up this morning in time to meet Peter and Shawn at Stoney G's for a morning jaunt. But surprisingly enough, I roused myself out of a deep slumber and was out the door by 7:35am. I'm going to be a hurting unit as the day wears on, I'll tell you what!

I've been scrambling lately to get things done before we head out to Spain NEXT FRIDAY. Stoked!!! I finally picked up Miller's compact bike box (I contacted him weeks ago and just now got over to Team Miller's house to pick it up), dropped off the old TV at the dump (it's been rolling around in the van for about two months - ever since we got the new one and it cost $37 smackaroos to get rid of it!), returned some stuff at Home Depot that I bought for our gutters and didn't end up using. I even had time to bake some Almond Biscotti. The days are whizzing by!

We are quickly approaching the winter solstice too - the shortest day of the year. It's all uphill from there though and we start building back toward the summer solstice - yay!



This is where we will be by the way - 60 degrees and mild temps. Hellsya!

White Fluff Addiction

You know it's bad when you start checking the snow report more than visiting your daily blog haunts. Things are getting chilly around the good old PNW - and that means white pow pow to be had in the mountains.

Suddenly our rustic cabin in the Methow is sounding really appealing despite not having any heat source. Who cares? We'll be skiing our brains out.

I did get up and move my legs in a circular motion outside this morning and it felt great.

Welcome Little One!

Proud new parents Sol and Cassie welcome Regan Tate Daughtery to the world on December 1, 2007 weighing in at 8 pounds 5 ounces. Way to go guys!!!

We were fortunate to visit them earlier in the week while they completed their stay at the Northgate Hospital and got to hold Sol's new "little Bud." It was funny hearing their account of picking out a name. Cassie said that Sol was insistent on a S name and they had already agreed on Tate for the middle name (a family name) and of course, she'd get Sol's last name. But any name starting with an S would leave the babies initials with STD and ridiculed for life. Cassie responded with, "it's like naming your baby HIV. Not happening." They are funny.

Weekend Warriors

I officially kicked off my first ski weekend of the winter this past weekend and am paying for it dearly this morning. The knees are tender, the body fatigued but my grin factor all weekend was HUGE!

Friday night was Ryan's office Christmas party and quite different than years past. He works for a home builder in Bothell and due to the real estate market fluctuation, they let go 40% of the office staff as a precaution. They also reduced their party budget significantly - in years past they've included a huge assortment of Costco party gifts people could bid on using fake money. (Items like personal computers, Ipods, a week vacation in Alaska, etc.) This year everyone was asked to bring something under $25 and people would still bid on them. Booze went for a whopping $1200 - pretty funny. We re-gifted some wine - shame on us! But some lucky $1200 bider had some nice red zin.

Saturday morning was an early start - up and at em by 4 am - on the road by 4:30. Orion and Sonya picked us up - and we headed north to Baker area to do some backcountry skiing. We arrived to the parking lot just as the sun came up - making for some awesome lighting.



Our route was to head up to Table Mountain area, assess everyone's ability and desires for the day and then make a call of where to go from there. The avalanche danger was pretty low - and the sky was cloudless - a perfect day for being outside and skinning around. We met up with Brent, Emily and Dave and headed out the ridge. Emily just got a new split board and had a difficult time with skinning - we traveled over a technical section and she took a fall into some trees and had a hard time getting out. Ultimately she and Brent decided to do some yo yo's on a guaranteed powder section while the 5 of us did a one day classic tour around Table Mountain.

The visibility was amazing - you could see Shuskan in full effect with its two hanging glaciers, Glacier Point, Mt Rainer and of course Mt Baker. It was absolutely stunning.



Luckily Dave was familiar with the area and guided us through the ridges and gullies. There was quite a bit of avalanche activity from the previous storm during the week - but when we dug a snow pit and did some analysis, we were confident we were safe. Talk about amazing powder turns and getting those first tele turns of the season! It was fantastic.

It was a long day though - at one point we boot packed to the top of a run and I remember wondering to myself, why am I here? But the next few powder turns quickly turned that frown upside down. :)

Our skin skirted around a lake - some brave soul had skinned across the lake before - but we were unwilling to risk a chilly dip in some ice cold waters. Instead we went around - and skinned for probably an hour and 15 minutes before finally arriving at the top of the saddle and shedding our skins for the last time. Talk about sloppy skiing down to the bottom - my legs were D-U-N.

The best part about skiing all day - is the sharing a good laugh over the days blunders while drinking beers at North Fork Beer Shrine on the way home. If you ever find yourself skiing at Baker and need some food - it's on the 522 just past the Sumas Y and has great pizza and beer.

The next morning came a little too early for the ski clinic I signed up for - so I decided to make the afternoon session and take my neighbor Jo. We had a great time learning some efficient V-1 techniques - thanks to an excellent instructor Eli. I was pretty tuckered out last night when I got home and the legs are definitely feeling it this morning!

The hiatus is over though - and this week it's back to the bike - I guess. :)

You gotta know when to hold 'em....

The frantic gift preparation phase hasn't quite hit me yet - but it's bound to start next week. Luckily we're leaving the country over the holidays and won't be doing the enormous gift exchange we usually do - but still have a few things we need to get together before leaving.

Speaking of traveling - we forfeited some tickets last winter to Beaver Creek because I pulled my hamstring right before we were supposed to fly out. We had a year to use them - and pay a $100/ticket change fee to exchange them. The deadline is tomorrow - and yesterday we finally found something reasonable. Check this: $159 round trip per person from Seattle to Tahoe Feb 1-4. And with our credit, as well as change fees, we only paid $11.38 out of pocket. Hellsya! Not to mention the killer deal we found by staying at a casino on the lake - we can gamble just minutes from our room. Let me tell you - Ryan and are a HUGE gamblers. ha! You gotta know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em; know when to walk away; know when to run.

We saw Larry the cable guy last night, and no, I'm not a closet hick. Talk about an interesting crowd that goes to see his act at the paramount. Larry's humor is pretty funny - he's definitely a dirty guy and likes to talk about poop. He's a man of one line wonders and strung about 1.5 hours worth of them together. One that sticks out in my mind, and this may not be appropriate for some of you younger readers, but you're going to hear it somewhere....

"I once took a picture of my butt hole with my camera phone and sent it to my aunt. She texted me back and said, 'boy that's the worst pumpkin pie I've ever seen!'"

Guess you had to be there. But the mullet man sitting in front of me was howling.

Near record breaking rain

Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire declared Washington in a state of emergency yesterday after the second highest recorded rainfall in 50+ years. SeaTac airport recorded 3.77" of rain in a 24 hour period.

I woke up to the constant tap tap tap of rain against the window. And then I listened a little closer and heard the undeniable sound of water inside the house. Uh oh. I rushed downstairs, expecting to see the basement awash in 12" of standing water again (remember our $48,000 broken water heater last winter?) relieved to find it was only water running through the aquifer in our over flow sump pump tank. Phew.

But I could still hear water running - and checked the other half of the basement to discover our reoccurring flood area and happened upon 7" of standing water. Luckily it was contained in the basement entry way. But if it gets much higher than it could over flow and start draining into our basement. Sweet.

Next order of business - a trip to the Home Depot. I figured the issue was in getting the gutters to kick the water further away from the house. The sump pump isle was filled with people, looking frantic at the empty shelves and empty Starbucks cups in their hands. I found some pipping, gutter adapters and duct tape and headed back home.

My earlier attempt to get rid of some of the water build up did nothing - the pond was as big, if not bigger than it had been when I left. Next step - find out why the gutters were leaking so bad. I should have known - they were FULL of leaves and crud from the roof. Whoops. Apparently we missed our annual gutter cleaning. (Which boils down to I didn't nag Ryan enough this year to get them cleaned.) 2 hours later the gutters were working like magic and I was able to bail out the flooded basement.

Short story: I saved our homestead and Ryan owes me dinner. :)

I finally get to get out on the bike today - and am STOKED! (7 hours of trainer time in the past few days will make anyone CRAZY.) It's in the mid- 50s today and other than the occasional flooded urban stream, it should be one of those ear to ear grin rides. :)

MAD PROPS TO JENNIE REED who rocked the World Cup Keirin with a Silver medal. Way to go Jennie!!!!